Monday, December 21, 2015

Syrian refugees are not like Jewish refugees

Comparisons between today's Syrian refugees and yesteryear's Jewish refugees are commonly being made nowadays: the West should take in refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war, President Obama and liberal politicians are urging. But New York City Mayor Bill di Blasio's pleas to a congregation in Brooklyn composed of Syrian Jews had them shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

"Some worshippers disputed the mayor’s historical interpretation.
“I don’t think it’s a fair comparison . . . The Jews never had a
history of being destructive,” said Brooklyn resident Judy Zarug.
“I was sitting next to a woman who is a Syrian refugee and she really reacted and it was uncomfortable.”
Another congregant, whose family fled Syria, also disagreed, explaining:
“The difference between me coming here in 1991 with my family is that we were kicked out for being Jewish.”

"Jews were refugees because they committed the offense of being Jewish.
They fled because they needed to save their lives. Not one of the Jewish
refugees who left Poland, Hungary, Germany or any other country, had
committed any atrocities before fleeing. None of them had sworn to
destroy the United States, Great Britain or Canada. None of them were
KNOWN terrorists. They fled to save their lives and only to save their
lives. There was no hidden agenda; nor were they trying to infiltrate
(what to them was) an enemy country."

Joseph Puder in Front Page Magazine argues that Jews escaping the Nazis and Arab lands had no choice: they were targeted for being Jews. More controversially, he argues that Syrian citizens do have a choice. Clearly, they are leaving a war zone where their lives are at risk. But it is the neighbouring Arab countries, especially the rich Gulf states, who are choosing not to give them refuge, leaving the West to carry the burden.

"President Obama is wrong to compare Syrian refugees who have
choices, and Jewish refugees who had none. Syrian citizens are choosing
to leave their homes. True, Assad’s barrel-bombs have killed
indiscriminately, and Islamic State (IS) brutality has impacted on many.
Yet should the U.S. and its allies impose “no fly zone” safe havens in
civilian areas, Syrians (unless they are Christians, Kurds, or Yazidis)
wouldn’t have to abandon their homes. Yesteryear, Jews from Arab lands
had no choice. They were thrown out of their homes were they lived for
millenniums, with literally the “shirts on their back.” Jewish
properties were confiscated by the Arab authorities or taken by street
mobs.

Similarly, survivors of the Holocaust could not return to their
homes, and all their properties and belongings were taken by the native
non-Jewish population or the Nazis.

Nazi Germany aimed to
eradicate all Jews from Europe and elsewhere, while no such danger has
faced Syrian refugees. In fact, there are 57 Islamic nations that are
able to receive their fellow co-religionists. The Jews of Palestine
during WWII would have done their utmost to absorb Jewish refugees had
the British Mandatory regime in Palestine not closed the gates to the
Jews of Europe."

A small proportion of refugees from Syria include Yazidis and Christians. Yet, for reasons of political correctness, the US State Department will not recognise Christians as genocide victims, writes Nina Shea in the National Review.

"Yazidis, according to the story by investigative reporter Michael
Isikoff, are going to be officially recognized as genocide victims, and
rightly so. Yet Christians, who are also among the most vulnerable
religious minority groups that have been deliberately and mercilessly
targeted for eradication by ISIS, are not. This is not an academic
matter. A genocide designation would have significant policy
implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken
from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other
protections to such victims. Worse, it would mean that, under the
Genocide Convention, the United States and other governments would not
be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide of these
Christians."

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Aside from the Yazidis and Syrian Christians who are not Arabs, you gotta say this about the Arabs at least - they're consistent. They refuse to resettle and absorb their Palestinian Arab brothers and now they refuse to resettle and absorb their Syrian Arab brothers.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)